Space travel may still have a long way to go, but the notion of
archaeological research and heritage management in space is already concerning
scientists and environmentalists.

In 1993, University of Hawaii’s anthropologist Ben Finney, who for much of
his career has studied the technology once used by Polynesians to colonize
islands in the Pacific, suggested that it would not be premature to begin
thinking about the archaeology of Russian and American aerospace sites on the
Moon and Mars. Finney pointed out that just as today's scholars use
archaeological records to investigate how Polynesians diverged culturally as
they explored the Pacific, archaeologists will someday study off-Earth sites to
trace the development of humans in space. He realized that it was unlikely
anyone would be able to conduct fieldwork in the near future, but he was
convinced that one day such work would be done.

There is a growing awareness, however, that it won’t be long before both
corporate adventurers and space tourists reach the Moon and Mars. There is a
wealth of important archaeological sites from the history of space exploration
on the Moon and Mars and measures need to be taken to protect these sites. In
addition to the threat from profit- seeking corporations, scholars cite other
potentially destructive forces such as souvenir hunting and unmonitored
scientific sampling, as has already occurred in explorations of remote polar
regions. Already in 1999 one company was proposing a robotic lunar rover mission
beginning at the site of Tranquility Base and rumbling across the Moon from one
archaeological site to another, from the wreck of the Ranger S probe to Apollo
17 s landing site. The mission, which would leave vehicle tyre- marks all over
some of the most famous sites on the Moon, was promoted as a form of theme-park
entertainment.

According to the vaguely worded United Motions Outer Space Treaty of 1967.
what it terms ‘space junk’ remains the property of the country that sent the
craft or probe into space. But the treaty doesn’t explicitly address protection
of sites like Tranquility Base, and equating the remains of human exploration of
the heavens with ‘space junk’ leaves them vulnerable to scavengers. Another
problem arises through other international treaties proclaiming that land in
space cannot be owned by any country or individual. This presents some
interesting dilemmas for the aspiring manager of extraterrestrial cultural
resources. Does the US own Neil Armstrong's famous first footprints on the Moon
but not the lunar dust in which they were recorded? Surely those footprints are
as important in the story of human development as those left by hominids at
Laetoli, Tanzania. But unlike the Laetoli prints, which have survived for 3.5
million years encased in cement-like ash. those at Tranquility Base could be
swept away with a casual brush of a space tourist’s hand. To deal with problems
like these, it may be time to look to innovative international administrative
structures for the preservation of historic remains on the new frontier.

The Moon, with its wealth of sites, will surely be the first destination of
archaeologists trained to work in space. But any young scholars hoping to claim
the mantle of history’s first lunar archaeologist will be disappointed. That
distinction is already taken.

On November 19. 1969. astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean made a
difficult manual landing of the Apollo 12 lunar module in the Moon’s Ocean of
Storms, just a few hundred feet from an unmanned probe. Surveyor J. that had
landed in a crater on April 19. 1967. Unrecognized at the time, this was an
important moment in the history of science. Bean and Conrad were about to
conduct the first archaeological studies on the Moon.

After the obligatory planting of the American flag and some geological
sampling, Conrad and Bean made their way to Surveyor 3. They observed that the
probe had bounced after touchdown and carefully photographed the impressions
made by its footpads. The whole spacecraft was covered in dust, perhaps kicked
up by the landing.

The astronaut-archaeologists carefully removed the probes television
camera, remote sampling arm. and pieces of tubing. They bagged and labelled
these artefacts, and stowed them on board their lunar module. On their return to
Earth, they passed them on to the Daveson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and
the Hughes Air and Space Corporation in EI Segundo, California. There,
scientists analyzed the changes in these aerospace artefacts.

One result of the analysis astonished them. A fragment of the television
camera revealed evidence of the bacteria Streptococcus mitis. I or a moment it
was thought Conrad and Bean had discovered evidence for life on the Moon, but
after further research the real explanation became apparent. While the camera
was being installed in the probe prior to the launch, someone sneezed on it. The
resulting bacteria had travelled to the Moon, remained in an alternating
freezing.' boiling vacuum for more than two years, and returned promptly to life
upon reaching the safety of a laboratory back on Earth.

The finding that not even the vastness of space can stop humans from
spreading a sore throat was an unexpected spin-off. But the artefacts brought
back by Rean and Conrad have a broader significance. Simple as they may seem,
they provide the first example of extraterrestrial archaeology and perhaps more
significant for the history of the discipline formational archaeology, the study
of environmental and cultural forces upon the life history of human artefacts in
space.